After Duvalier
by Jet556
Summary: AU set in 1972. A year after the death of the tyrannical Francois Duvalier, Tina Kwee is sent to Haiti to write a story about the country now under the rule of Francois' even more tyrannical son Jean-Claude. What she finds there is a story stranger than the tales William Seabrook told of and the tales of the tyrannical Francois Duvalier.
1. A Nigma News

**Welcome everyone. Enjoy this little story as I revisit the zombies and the voodoo to do something more original and less "White Zombie" with "Detentionaire" characters. Enjoy and review.**

 **A. Nigma News**

Octorber 1st, 1972.

Over a year since the death of Francois Duvalier, the absolute President of Haiti had passed. His even more absolute son, Jean-Claude, was now the President.

Thus did Tina Kwee stand before her boss Wendell Barrage, a veteran of the October Crisis prior to going into the news business! It seemed that Barrage was sending Tina to Haiti to write a story about it now that it had passed from one autarch to another.

"You can't be serious, Barrage!" exclaimed Tina. "To Haiti under Jean-Claude? Might as well be going to—"

"Ms. Kwee, I already offered this to Mr. Moneranian." Stated Barrage. "Being the coward that he is he quit and went to work for MWF News. Before he left we had two top reporters, Moneranian may have been a coward but still he was still one of our top reporters." Moneranian would soon fall into poverty and die in the gutter. "Now we are only left with you."

"Well, if you put it that way…" said Tina, thoughtfully. "I guess I will go but I will require some…"

"Require what?" asked Barrage. "Lodgings? Basil Hagen has already granted you his permission to stay at his Haitian estate in Port-au-Prince while he is away."

"Where is he now?" asked Tina. "The German estate? The Irish… No, wait. The Troubles are going on in Ireland so, the German estate?"

"Actually, he is at home here in Toronto right now." Stated Barrage.

"Then I'll go see him about the lodgings and then make my way to the airport." Said Tina. "Unless he is at his grandfather's theatre since I'm guessing you aren't speaking literally."

"I am not." Commented Barrage. "I would call ahead before showing up at one place only to learn he is at another."


	2. Zombies and Voodoo

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 **Zombies and Voodoo**

When Tina went to Basil and told him of her predicament, Basil told some rather unwanted information. He told of an anthology by William Seabrook called "The Magic Island" that introduced North America and Europe to abstractions that had held the atoll of Haiti in a chokehold of awful alarm since 1629. The belief was called "Voodoo": A complicated amalgam of African folk magic, Christianity and atmospheric psychology. The most appalling abstraction of this canon was the zombie: a cadaver reanimated by charms and bludgeoned to conduct the choices of the lord enchanter while in a state of living death. Seabrook wrote that he had actually seen a zombie walking through the sugarcane fields under the light of the full moon.

Basil continued with stating that that Francois Duvalier had fostered a cult of personality and claimed he was the physical embodiment of Haiti itself. He also revived the traditions of Voodoo. Later using them to consolidate his power with his claim of being a Voodoo priest himself. To make himself even more imposing, Duvalier modeled his image on Baron Samedi, the Loa of Death. He donned sunglasses to hide his eyes and talked with a strong nasal tone associated with the Loa of Death. The propaganda of his regime stated that he was one with Baron Samedi, Jesus and God himself. The most celebrated image of Duvalier's reign showed a standing Jesus with a hand on Duvalier's shoulder captioned "I have chosen him." This dictator had declared himself an "immaterial being" as well as "the Haitian flag" soon after his first election. In 1964, he published a catechism in which the Lord's Prayer was reworded to pay tribute to Duvalier instead of God. In his closet, Duvalier kept the head of a political enemy who tried to overthrow him in 1963 and believed another political enemy was able to change into a black dog at will and ordered the militia to begin killing all black dogs on sight in Port-au-Prince.

"Voodoo is not dead in Haiti." Said Basil when he was finished.

Thus on the plane with her boyfriend Lee Ping, did Tina think of what Basil had said. It was absurd. Zombies only existed in bad Mexican movies and Voodoo was as dead as Julius Caesar!

"Zombies are work of fiction and voodoo is dead." Muttered Tina.

"Of course they are." Said Lee, having heard what Tina said. "Are you expecting us to live 'Isle of the Snake People?'"

"No, just thinking of what Basil said."

"Don't work yourself up over what he says. Having an estate in a place doesn't mean you know everything about it."


	3. Haiti

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 **Haiti**

To say that Haiti was better off under Jean-Claude than his father would be untrue. Opposition was not tolerated and the legislature was a metaphorically rubber stamp. Jean-Claude neglected his role in the government, squandering considerable domestic and foreign goodwill and facilitated the dominance of Haitian affairs by a clique of hardline cronies.

This was not a Haiti that people would dream of seeing. This was the Haiti of nightmares.

Thus did Tina stare out from the guest room in Basil Hagen's Haiti estate! Would that it could be called something grand but the Haiti estate was no different that any middle class North American house. It was also nowhere near the center of Port-au-Prince it was actually on the very eastern borders of the city.

"Well, Basil could have said this place was on the border of the city." Commented Tina.

"It may best." Said Lee. "We shall be safer from any conflict going on farther in but can we truly be safe if what is said about Haiti is true?"

"Its just myths." Tina said.

"Still…" Lee looked at the bookshelf in the bedroom. Books such as "The Magic Island", "Jane Eyre" and "I Am Legend" adorned the shelves. "Myths have to be based on something."

"Then where could the myths of zombies come from?" asked Tina.

"I don't know." Replied Lee. "Some sort of drug maybe?"

"Whatever the case, I'm going out to get some information for my story." Tina walked towards the door. "I'll be back in a bit."

"I'm coming with you!"

"I'm fine, Lee. This is nothing I can't handle myself."

"Never been in anywhere like Haiti." Commented Lee.

"What has Haiti got that Ireland hasn't?" asked Tina. Voodoo, zombies, that sort of thing.


	4. Drums

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 **Drums**

As Tina walked along the sandy path, the sound of drums came to her ears. It didn't sound like something a musician would use, they sounded more ceremonial.

Ceremonial? What Basil had said must have really been on Tina's mind! Was she really supposed to believe these were drums for some sort of voodoo ceremony? This was starting to seem like some damn EC horror comic.

What was so interesting about hearing drums? One could hear drums anywhere! There was no such thing as zombies and voodoo was dead.

"Tina?" Tina looked to her left and saw Cam Martinez. "What are you doing here?"

"Here on assignment to write a story about Haiti after Francois Duvalier." Replied Tina. "And what about you, Cam? Doing some research for a historical novel?"

"I was until I realized something frightening." Stated Cam.

"And what's that?" asked Tina.

"I know neither French nor Haitian Creole!"

Tina just stared. That was like something out of a Shevelove and Gelbart play. A specific one! Hopefully this didn't mean she would be the playing the role of the brainless "hero." Someone like Holger Holgaart would be better suited for that. He may have been named after that Danish hero but a Holger Danske he was not. He was far too incompetent to be a Holger Danske.

"You never should have left English speaking Canada." Commented Tina.

"Yes, I'm well aware of that…" agreed Cam. "I should have gone to a library and checked out a few books about Haitian history."

"Do you know anything about the drums?" asked Tina.

"Oh, you've heard them too. They are voodoo drums."

"Did Basil tell you to say that to me should we meet?" asked Tina.

"Basil Hagen? I haven't seen him since our disagreement over who the historical King Arthur was. I believe it to be Riothamus but he believes it to be Lucius Artorius Castus."


	5. Out of Fiction

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 **Out of Fiction**

Out from the brush at the left side of the road walked a figure. It was a man but one who did not seem to be aware that there was two other people on the path. His eyes were wide and they looked as if they were the eyes of one dead. He breathed yet the state of his eyes made it hard to interpret whether he was of the living or the dead.

As the sunset the moon rose. A full moon! Thus as William Seabrook once saw a zombie walking through the sugarcane by the light of the full moon, now did Tina Kwee and Cam Martinez see a zombie cross a path by the light of the full moon.

Alas, it did not immediately dawn on Tina was she was looking upon. She thought she was looking upon some sleepwalker.

"Sir?" she asked. "Wake up!"

"Wake up?" asked Cam, surprised at what she was saying. "Tina, don't you know what this is?"

"Please don't say this is a zombie." Groaned Tina. She just refused to believe such a thing could be real. They were things of fiction!

"I don't have too." Commented Cam. "You already have."

"I have not!"

"But you have!" corrected Cam. "In order to say 'Please don't say this is a zombie' you had to say 'this is a zombie' and therefore you have said 'this is a zombie.'"

"But zombies are things out of fiction!" exclaimed Tina. "They can't be real!"

"Do you doubt your eyes?" asked Cam.

"No and I'm not about to start quoting Charles Dickens like Basil would!" The Dickens that Basil would have quoted would have been from "A Christmas Carol", specifically the first stave titled "Marley's Ghost."

"Alright then, believe what you want." Said Cam. "But anyway I'm continuing on my walk. You can follow this… 'sleepwalker' or you can accompany me." So did Cam continue on his way.

But alas, Tina's curiosity was aroused. Thus did she follow her "sleepwalker." Didn't anybody ever tell her that it was curiosity that killed the cat?


	6. The Trail of a Zombie

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 **The Trail of a Zombie**

Follow a zombie? It seemed like a mad thing to do but yet Tina was doing it. The whole country of Haiti had gone mad so would following a zombie seem that much out of the usual?

Tina remembered seeing some movies where zombies could speak. Could this one?

"Sir?" she asked, hoping to get the zombie's attention this time. Still the zombie did not react. "Sir?" Tina placed a hand on the zombie's shoulder. Still it did not react. It just kept walking.

This left her stumped. What was she to do now?

What did she know about zombies?

Well, in Haitian folklore a zombie was an animated corpse raised by magical means such as witchcraft. But Tina did not believe in witchcraft. So, maybe something else raised them?

The concept had been popularly associated with the Voodoo religion but it played no part in its formal practices. Then how did zombies become a part of the religion?

The word zombie was first recorded in 1819 in poet Robert Southey's history of Brazil with the word being written as "zombi." According to Oxford English dictionary the word was of West African origin and compared it to the Kongo words "nzambi", the word for god, and "zumbi", the word for fetish.

That was really all Tina knew!

She had seen "Zombies of Mora Tau", "Invisible Invaders", "The Fur Skulls of Jonathan Drake", "The Last Man on Earth", "The Plague of the Zombies", "Night of the Living Dead", "The Oblong Box" and "Isle of the Snake People." It was those films that had firmly put the concept of the zombie as something being completely fiction. That new movie "Horror Express" staring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas was said to involve a zombie. After going through this she probably wouldn't see it.

All Tina could wonder was wonder what rabbit hole this Zombie's trail would go through.


	7. The Voodoo Ceremony

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 **The Voodoo Ceremony**

To say Tina had been expecting to find a voodoo ceremony at the end of the zombie's trail would be untrue. She thought voodoo was dead in Haiti. It wasn't. In truth even years later voodoo would not be considered dead in Haiti.

This could not have been real.

Why did Tina doubt her senses? Did she find such things impossible? There were such things.

This could not have been real.

Did she really think that zombies were only things of the movies? Zombies weren't just a type of alcoholic drink. With the right kind of concoctions one could create a zombie. It was such a concoction that created this zombie.

This could not have been real.

"Voodoo is not dead in Haiti." Basil had said to Tina. And yet she had not believed him. She had not believed anyone who had warned her of such dangers. She had not listened to them, they who could have had any idea of what danger being caught by voodoo priests.

This could not have been real.

"You can follow this… 'sleepwalker' or you can accompany me." Is what Cam had said! She should have. There was too much risk in this. The things she was seeing at the moment were beyond her wildest imagination. This danger was danger! There was no doubt about.

This could not have been real.

"Never been anywhere like Haiti." was what Lee had said to Tina. He was right. She had been to Ireland but never to anywhere else. She had been to a nation at war. Not to a place that was in a mortal grip of terror since the seventeenth century.

This was real!


	8. What to Write

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 **What to Write**

Back at Basil's Haitian estate, which as luck would have it would be sold as soon as Tina and Lee returned to Canada, Tina sat at a writing desk. What was she to write about? That while a dictator worse than his evil father ruled the cities, his religion was the one that truly ruled the nation?

"Stumped?" asked Lee as he walked in.

"Very." Replied Tina. "What do I write? Unless people have seen such things will they believe them?"

"You have idiots believing the Illuminati still exist never mind they disbanded in 1785." Stated Lee. "Who says what people do and do not believe?"

"They are eccentrics." Commented Tina. "Not everyone is an eccentric. If we all were the whole world would have thought the 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama had been an actual broadcast."

"Hmm, eccentrics… Makes me think of Chaz." Lee wasn't too far off. Chaz was half way eccentric and half narcissist. He would die in poverty, alone without ever changing his ways. He would die as he lived: an eccentric narcissist. No one would mourn Chaz. Only an idiot, a maniac or a barbarian would do such a thing. Chaz was a human being in appearance alone. In spirit he was more of rabid rat, being as mad as one.

"Well, I can't write about him." Said Tina. "Or eccentrics in general. What am I to write about?"

"What people want to hear." Said Lee. "Jean-Claude is of the Voodoo religion, what you saw was a voodoo ceremony. Merely write about the tyrant and his religion."


	9. Barrage's Decision

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 **Barrage's Decision**

Having returned to Canada, Tina now sat opposite of Barrage as he read what she wrote. She was nervous, would he choose to print the story? Barrage was always kind of hard when it came to delivering criticism. But there was something different about him. He seemed tired, drained, on the verge of defeat. What was going on?

"Alright. It's good. We'll put it in the paper." Said Barrage, handing the story to Tina and standing up.

"Thank you, sir but I have to ask is something wrong?" asked Tina.

"We've lost a lot of money since you left for Haiti." Replied Barrage. "We may have to declare bankruptcy if we keep losing any money."

"What? How did we lose money?"

"Robbery, pure economic loss, etc. I can only hope that this story is successful, I'll be putting in on the front page so people will know what our main story is."

One could only hope.


	10. Separating Myth from Reality

**Welcome back everyone. Here ends this story. The next AU shall be based off of "The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but it won't be a carbon copy. Enjoy and review.**

 **Separating Myth from Reality**

As it turned out, Tina's little story was the one that saved A. Nigma News. In fact, it was such a success that all who read what came from MWF news soon abandoned the company and it went bankrupt not long after and completely forgotten by the time Francois Duvalier's son Jean-Claude had been run out of Haiti in 1986, twelve years later.

A week after, Tina spoke with Basil Hagen, at the time recovering from a stabbing that may or may not have accidental. At his house, a rather half-impressive looking building, Basil sat opposite of Tina in his writing room.

"So, how was your visit?" asked Basil.

"Fine." Replied Tina. "But there is something I found strange about the zombie I saw."

"Oh, and what's that?"

"I always thought that zombies were doddering corses and infective brawn eaters." Stated Tina.

"Was that an imitation of how I sometimes talk?" asked Basil. Tina nodded in reply. "That's not bad but you are thinking of the zombies in those films by that idiot George A. Romero. A zombie is in fact a drugged person, a person who is drugged periodically by a… 'magician' and should that magician die and someone not replace them then eventually the zombie will recover and once more be a normal person."

"I suppose the walking dead thing comes from them having been put in a death-like state." Commented Tina.

"There you go!" Basil gave a chuckle. "One must learn to separate myth from reality."

"So how is Venus?" asked Tina.

"Gravid." Replied Basil.

"Gravid?" asked Tina.

"Parturient."

"I'd like something less technical." Commented Tina.

"Very well. She is expectant. I am to be a father."

 **The End**


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